Homer Quotes
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Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
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More Homer Quotes
It is as if Homer not only chronicled the siege of Troy, but conducted the siege as well. As if Shakespeare set his play writing aside to lead the English against the Armada.
— 1992 Tribute to Lincoln's literary and political genius. In the New York Times,18 Nov.
Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets;Jonson was theVirgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.
john dryden— 1668 An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,'Shakespeare and Ben Jonson Compared'.
Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. I am vexed when the worthy Homer nods.
— Ars Poetica, l.359.
Helen, did Homer never see Thy beauties, yet could write of thee?
Ben Jonson— The Underwood,'An Ode' (published1640).
Have I not made blind Homer sing to me?
Christopher Marlowe— c.1592 Doctor Faustus (published1604), act 2, sc.2.
Though I've never read a line of Homer I believe the Greekof today is essentially unchanged.If anything he is more Greek than he ever was.
— 1941The Colossus of Maroussi, pt.1.
We welcome almost any break in the monotony of things, and a man has only to murder a series of wives in a new way to become known to millions of people who have never heard of Homer.
— The New Statesman, 22 October 1921
In poetry there are two giants, rough Homer and fine Shakespere. In music likewise we have two giants, Beethoven, the thinker, and the superthinker Berlioz.
modest mussorgsky— Letter to Vladimir Stassov, October 18, 1872; Oskar von Riesemann (trans. Paul England) Moussorgsky (1929) p. 107.
Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. We do not need the praises of a Homer, or of anyone else whose words may delight us for the moment, but the estimation of facts will fall short of what is really true.
Pericles— As quoted in Eternal Greece (1961) by Rex Warner, p. 34
The Trojan War without Homer was nothing more than a battle over trade routes.
b. w. powe— Interlude, p. 113
Let us also once more rejoice in, and thank God for, the fact that we know nothing about Homer, and practically nothing about Shakespeare.
george saintsbury— A Last Scrap Book (London: Macmillan, 1924) p. 42
It was Homer who gave laws to the artist.
francis wayland— The Iliad and the Bible, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 45.
Achilles exists only through Homer . Take away the art of writing from this world , and you will probably take away its glory .
françois-rené de chateaubriand— Les Natchez (1826)
Troy is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer , according to the credits. Homer's estate should sue.
roger ebert— Review of Troy (14 May 2004)
"My brain reels," moaned Homer the man. " Reality melts away."
r. a. lafferty— "The Hole in the Corner" from Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970)
Money appears as measure (in Homer, e.g. oxen) earlier than as medium of exchange, because in barter each commodity is still its own medium of exchange. But it cannot be its own or its own standard of comparison.
karl marx— Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 93
When he was wounded with an arrow in the ankle, and many ran to him that were wont to call him a god, he said smiling, "That is blood, as you see, and not, as Homer saith, ‘such humour as distils from blessed gods.'"
Plutarch— 43 Alexander.
Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger, and Antigonus, coming behind him as he was stirring his skillet, said, "Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon?" Antagoras replied, "Do you think, O king, that Agamemnon, when he did such exploits, was a peeping in his army to see who boiled congers?"
Plutarch— 46 Antigonus I.
I, Phœbus, song those songs that gained so much renown I, Phœbus, sang them; Homer only wrote them down.
— In Greek Anthology.
When you come down to it, has there ever been a genuine polytheism? Even Homer supposes a sort of fundamental unity of the divine that permits the gods to identify themselves as gods, even when they dwell far from one another ( Odyssey 5.79ff.). What the [monotheistic] revelations bring is, rather, the end of a "cosmotheism" that makes no radical distinction between the divine and the physical.
— Rémi Brague, interviewed by Christophe Cervellon and Kristell Trego, from Rémi Brague, The Legend of the Middle Ages, University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 1–22.
In poetry there are two giants, rough Homer and fine Shakespere. In music likewise we have two giants, Beethoven , the thinker, and the superthinker Berlioz .
— Letter to Vladimir Stassov, October 18, 1872; Oskar von Riesemann (trans. Paul England) Moussorgsky (1929) p. 107.
Seven cities warr'd for Homer being dead, Who living had no roofe to shroud his head.
thomas heywood— Thomas Heywood, Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells.
Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. I'm aggrieved when sometimes even excellent Homer nods.
— Horace, in Ars Poetica.
In the Odyssey one may liken Homer to the setting sun, of which the grandeur remains without the intensity.
— Longinus, in On the Sublime.
Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. We do not need the praises of a Homer, or of anyone else whose words may delight us for the moment, but the estimation of facts will fall short of what is really true.
— As quoted in Eternal Greece (1961) by Rex Warner, p. 34
When he was wounded with an arrow in the ankle, and many ran to him that were wont to call him a god, he said smiling, "That is blood, as you see, and not, as Homer saith, ‘such humour as distils from blessed gods.'"
— 43 Alexander. (Others)
[ Homer 's] Fire burns with extraordinary Heat and Vehemence ... Virgil's is a clearer and a chaster Flame ...
— Richard Blackmore, Preface to King Arthur (1697).
